


daycore

by verulams (finnlogan)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: AU, Extremis, Hurt Tony Stark, M/M, Mental Health Issues, No I will not say what kind of AU. Just know it's AU., POV Steve Rogers, Psychosis, Recovery, Romance, Therapy, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:22:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23119159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finnlogan/pseuds/verulams
Summary: Or, "the tides are turning".Tony downloads the internet into his head, and then things get... difficult. He sees things, hears things. He thinks things, too. Steve isn't sure what to make of it at first, but- slowly, slowly but surely, the tides turn.Recovery is possible.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36





	1. dopamine twinges

**Author's Note:**

> HERES A SELF INDULGENT AU NOBODY WILL READ! 
> 
> please be mindful of the tags before reading

“I’m a god,” he says, conversationally.

Steve peers at him. His gut flips. “Are you?” He replies, equally conversationally. Maybe his voice cracks, maybe it doesn’t. Either way, Tony doesn’t seem to notice.

Tony shrugs. “Probably.”

That’s after Extremis. That’s after- it’s after, it’s _after_.

Steve reminds himself every day. It was after Extremis. Tony never used to be- he never-

Was he? Was he always… Did he use to be this way?

Did he?

***

They’d known each other for a long time, by that point. Steve had been pulled from the ice, and Tony gave his all to try and upgrade himself so that he was able to save people. They wouldn’t have found him in the first place if the ice hadn’t been receding anyway, but- Tony was reasonably adamant. 

Save the planet. Now Steve was out there was nothing good to come of climate change. That was Tony’s thing, really. Tony wanted to make sure the planet survived. Tony had-

He had a _saving-the-planet_ thing.

Tony seems to catch him in the thought. “Never used to be,” he mumbles, under his breath. “Used to wanna save myself.” He shrugs again.

Steve squints at him. As far as he’d known, he hadn’t said any of that out loud. “Tony...”

Tony squints right back. “What? Nothing to see here, sir, nothing to bother yourself about, just me and my weird saving-the-planet complex that everyone is convinced that I have-” He heaves a breath. “You’re aware that it’s everyone else’s _lack_ of saving the planet complex that’s the problem, right?” He eyes Steve warily. “Come on, Rogers, you’ve gotta agree that the planet is _dying._ ” 

He’s right, to some extent. But Tony, these days, he was- “I don’t disagree, Tony,” he says, when it’s clear response is required. Measured. He had to be around Tony, these days. He wasn’t-

Tony wasn’t well.

“Hm,” Tony mumbles. He bites at his lip.

They’re sat on opposite ends of the table. Tony’s tapping away at his pad, Steve is reading over some files, and-

Somehow it was back to this.

Again.

***

It had started with the technology. It had started with JARVIS, actually, he thinks. It’s hard to know, Steve hasn’t been here _that_ long in the grand scheme of things. Pepper and Rhodes seem worried though. It’s another example of Steve not quite knowing where to draw the line though, another example of his being rammed unpleasantly into the middle of a crisis. He was too old, somehow, for this shit. 

But anyway, it’d started with the ethereal glow of JARVIS. JARVIS was everywhere. He was in the walls, the screens, the lights, he was in the air molecules sitting at Steve’s throat. He was, without fail, in every spot in the tower. He was everywhere.

Tony’s crazed eyes during the first time JARVIS’d been taken out had said enough. He’d said, “ _Oh, shit-_ ” and then the whole damn place had gone dark and Tony had _roared._ He’d seemed to spike upwards, a jetting spear from where he’d been gently arranged next to Steve on the sofa.

“ _No,”_ He’d screamed. It’d been guttural. Steve, at that point, hadn’t even realised. He’d thought it was a power outage or something.

And then, there Tony was, slamming his hands against the arc reactor and flinging his arms out. His eyes, from what Steve could see reflected in the dark, had been wide. Stricken. 

Steve missed a beat. On some level, he noticed the muttering, the little shifting noises Tony was making. They reminded him of ants, almost, little clicking carapaces marching through a jungle. But he only noticed on some level, because on every other he was suddenly on _high_ fucking alert, because something had gone really terribly, badly, wrong, and he had absolutely no idea how he could fix this-

He’d reached out an arm to Tony, gently, arm pressing out rather than grabbing, and Tony had- 

Tony had _flinched_.

And then he’d been sprinting, down the stairs, through the corridors. Steve had followed. There was absolutely no chance that he’d do anything else because Tony looked-

Tony looked _unwell._

(It would not be the last time Tony looked unwell.)

Eventually, they’d managed to fix it. Or rather, Tony had. Tony had split the machine casing downstairs in two, prodded some wire, plugged in something that Steve thinks should have already been plugged in, and then he’d screamed some expletives and kicked the fucking thing.

When JARVIS had come back online, he’d cried.

Steve wasn’t sure what to make of that, so he doesn’t make anything of it at all.

(That’s not true, not really. Steve had tried, they all had. Gentle nudges in the right direction, after it had become clear that Steve’s usual get-to-the-point method wasn’t going to work, not at _all._ For all Tony was a motor-mouth, he was… Well. Sparse on the details.)

***

It seems, to Steve, like really there should’ve been some kind of build-up. There _should’ve_ been a little sequence of events leading up to this point.

Instead, what happens is that Tony appears to plug the internet into his head. It also appears that he does this overnight.

He leaves, one day, for just the night. He goes- somewhere. Steve has no idea where. Didn’t matter, at the time, could’ve been some _business_ thing. Some gala. Steve was still a little nervous in modern crowds: they weren’t crueller, that would be the wrong word. They weren’t meaner either, but they certainly were- different. Flippant, somehow. Steve still isn’t sure how to deal with flippant. Anyway, he’s not sure how to deal with galas, so he’s not mad at missing whatever Tony’s doing.

It all makes sense to him.

Right up- right up until it doesn’t.

There’s that evening, of course. It’d been quiet, but it’d been fine. Pepper had come by, prodded him with a ‘where’s Tony?’ and he’d said, ‘Not sure’, and that had been the end of it. He liked Pepper, so it wasn’t an intrusion when she click-clacked into the room, hadn’t been a problem when she’d asked how he was and hadn’t even been a problem when she’d disturbed his drawing. She hadn’t asked who he’d been drawing, either, which he was grateful for. He had a thing about drawing people he knew. He’d draw Pepper, he’d draw the tower, he’d- he’d draw Tony. He’d illustrate, too. There was something powerful in taking shapes he knew and making them move any way he wanted. It was about control, probably. He hadn’t seemed to get a lot of that, recently.

He sighs to himself as Pepper leaves the room. Briefly, it hits him that in another timeline, it might not have happened like this at all. The tower is quiet without Tony in it. There’s nobody _keeping_ him here, either. But Nick Fury had-

He liked Fury, really. Just didn’t like him as much as he liked Tony.

The evening is quiet. Tony doesn’t get back, that evening. Something curls in Steve’s gut at the thought of him at someone’s- something. He grimaces and grits his teeth, pressing too hard with his mechanical pencil, and grimaces again when it snaps.

He sighs. Normal pencils were better, at the end of the day. Far better than the thin plasticky things they gave out free at all the events Tony and Pepper drafted him to go to.

...Whatever Tony was doing wasn’t his business, anyway.

The evening, after that, is calm and quiet. It is soft and slow, and although it’s punctuated by the occasional punch of emotion, there’s a sense that-

Fuck it, even if Tony was sleeping with someone, he’d be back tomorrow.

That’s how it always was.

***

It's a coincidence, the way it happens. Steve wanders across the hallway and hears the ding of the elevator. He pauses, then stands.

He waits.

The ding of the machine as the door slides open is- it’s deafening. It rends the room in half, almost. Rings out. It doesn’t do that, not really, but there’s a bang from the inside of the metal box and Steve’s brows crease up before he even notices there’s a problem. 

Tony careens out of the elevator. He clutches at his chest, and Steve spots strange reflections in his dark sunglasses. He spots that immediately. Before he spots the way his usually pristine suit was ripped and the way the sunglasses were just a little cracked and the way his black, pointy shoes were scuffed.

“Tony?”

Tony clocks he’s there, then. Steve narrows his eyes, high-alert. Adrenaline starts flooding him. Standing up straighter, Tony visibly tries to school his posture- his weight shifts up to his spine, across his hips, and then rests on one side. Then, he staggers.

“ _Tony?”_

“Mm? Ah,” He rasps. His voice sounds deeper than normal. “Nothin’ to worry about,” he coughs. Clear liquid comes out of his mouth. Tony gently puts his fingers up to it and then looks up. Quick as a flash, like watching the lights switch back on after a power outage in the city, Tony comes back online. He wipes his mouth with trembling fingers, and grins a flash-bulb smile.

Steve feels his gut drop out from under him. “JARVIS,” he barks, and watches as the shadows of Tony’s eyes roll. 

“Sir?” comes the smooth voice, dripping out from the ceiling. 

“Is Tony okay?”

Tony grins, lopsided. It’s odd when he blinks- when he blinks it looks like a lightning clap through his glasses. “Yeah, JARVIS, am I?”

JARVIS sighs. “I do not know how to answer that, sir. I think, for your purposes, that he is physically... fine.”

Steve narrows his eyes, and Tony widens his smile.

His trembling hands push his hair upwards, off the sides of his glasses, and bites at his top lip. 

“Hey, Steve.”

He hadn’t realised his hands had been outstretched, fingers spread, placating. He gently relaxes them, deliberately relaxing his posture. He-

“Should I be worried?” He asks. He feels the question rail against his ribcage, roll around his gut. It slaps him in the face when Tony smiles, because that was not an answer, and that could mean _anything._ “Tony,” he barks. “What’s going on?”

“No,” Tony grins. “I don’t think you should be worried, personally.” He flicks a finger lazily over his shoulders. The only remains of the staggering, haggard man he’d just seen are in the trembling of his fingers. “JARVIS might have something different to say, though.”

“Tough shit,” Steve says, plainly. “I’m worried about you now. What’s going on?” He repeats.

JARVIS sighs. “Sir, I’d ask for you to not involve me in things like this, but I feel that you would ignore me anyway.”

“Tony,” Steve feels his guts clench, heat sneaking into his muscles. “Tony, what have you done?”

Tony’s smile drops then. “...What was necessary.” He mutters.

“Tony,” Steve returns, and feels like a fucking dog barking after it’s owner, because this was not only bewildering but also kind of terrifying, and Tony had done stupid shit before, but he’d never done-

Had he-

What had he done?

The lightning flash of his eyes cracks like a whip. 

Steve takes a step towards him, and then another, and Tony remains stationary.

“Sir, I must ask that you-” and when Steve ignores him, his computerised voice is just a little more tense, a little more nervous, when he says, “ _Captain Rogers,_ I _must_ ask that-”

“Shut up, J, let him.”

Steve hadn’t even realised what he’d wanted to do until then. He gets it then, another flash of light through the glasses that cringes in his guts. His arms are still down, but soon he’s standing in front of Tony, and Steve’s just big enough, just tall enough, just wide enough to make him feel like Tony’s not the one in control.

It’s a lie, of course.

He’s directly in Tony’s space, body almost, almost touching. The proximity sends a twinge through him, like it always has before, but-

Tony doesn’t- he doesn’t seem like he’s breathing. It’s quiet. The quietest it’s _ever_ been, possibly, with Tony around. Silent, solemn, static in place.

Steve catches a breath in his throat, bites down on his tongue, and Tony’s smile clicks down just a fraction of a kilowatt, and then-

He reaches out. His hands are gentle on the side of Tony’s sunglasses, but Tony flinches anyway, then exhales for the first time that Steve has noticed.

“Huh,” he mumbles, as Steve gently, _gently,_ pulls them off his face. 

Tony’s eyes are squeezed shut. Suddenly, at the worst possible time, Steve is hit with the desire to kiss him. He stamps down on it, firmly. No time at all for that. If someone tried to kiss Steve when he was- well, when he was… _panicking,_ he would probably punch them.

“Tony,” he intones, quietly. He grips at the sunglasses. The delicate skin of Tony’s eyelid is faintly blue. “Tones, what have you done?”

Tony visibly clenches his jaw at that, and Steve watches as the lines of his jaw smooth out, just a little, immediately afterwards. He sighs. “Knew you’d make it difficult,” he mutters and then opens his eyes.

Something cracks at the bottom of Steve’s feet.

Tony’s eyes were- blue? Not just blue, glowing, _glowing_ blue, little fragments of shapes whirling around them, circles and hoops and tiny squares-

“Easy tiger,” Tony says, and Steve is aware he’s gripping tight to Tony’s arms. He releases them immediately, still staring at the corners of shapes and fluid bright blue.

When Tony blinks and smiles, Steve leans back just a little.

“Tony,” he murmurs. “What…?”

He smiles wider, teeth shining faintly. Steve notices briefly that the blue of his eyes matches the arc reactor. “I guess you could say that I got an upgrade.”

Tony’s teeth look sharp.

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that, and as he gapes, Tony walks straight past him. Reaching out to grab at his arm, Tony shakes him off.

He grabs the pad off the table, turns on his heel, and struts back into the elevator.

He winks at Steve, and god damnit, Steve can feel himself reaching out again, but all Tony does is laugh, and press the button. The doors start to close.

“See you tomorrow, Steve. Sleep tight. I certainly won’t”

“I- _Tony._ ”

“Ciao!”

When the doors shut, the room feels pointedly dark, and his breath escapes from him in one frustrated gasp.

“ _JARVIS,”_ he says, and feels very odd about the fact that the AI can sigh back at him-

“Yes, Captain Rogers.” As always, JARVIS’s tone is cool. But Steve can detect something, there, something about the way he sighs.

“What’s going on?” He asks, staring at the corner of the ceiling.

JARVIS remains silent for quite some time. “I do not think I have an answer for you that will be satisfactory.”

Steve crosses his arms, glaring now. “JARVIS.” He barks, and the machine sighs again.

“I think it would be better if you ask Tony, Captain Rogers.” 

Steve narrows his eyes. “Not good enough.”

“And yet, Captain Rogers, I am… coded, I think, to inform you that it would be better if you ask Tony.” JARVIS pauses, but a whirr about the building suggests there’s _thought_ there.

The idea never fails to unsettle him. 

“Are you familiar with coding, Captain Rogers?”

Steve bites his lip, frowning. “Never as familiar as I’d like, but…”

“Perhaps you would find that Sir’s notes, particularly in code that I utilize, helpful.”

“JARVIS?” He questions. His arms are crossed, body bent and whole existence wrapped tight around the unsettled and fearful feeling in his gut.

“...Just a thought.”

The resemblance of it to Tony cracks something in him. There was-

There was _no way_ he’d let this happen, no _way_ Tony would let this happen if the roles were reversed.

“I’m going down there,” he mutters, striding over to the elevator and flexing his fingers.

JARVIS sighs as if exhaling through a nose that he didn’t have. “If you must.”

Jamming his hand against the button, he stares at the lights in the ceiling. They hurt against his retinas, but… The lights, at least, don’t have that blue tinge to them. The room around him is bathed in a soft yellow glow.

He cringes at the thought of Tony’s blue-not-brown eyes and presses the button harder.

***

Tony is tapping something on a pad when he knocks. The walls are glass, so transparent that it seemed to make little sense they were there at all.

Tony looks up after a few seconds.

“Huh,” he mutters, standing. He stretches, and when his joints crack it sounds louder than it should. The room, oddly, is silent. No music. Standing, he grins lopsidedly at Steve. He gestures with his fingers. When Steve hesitates, door half open, Tony laughs. “C’mon, Steve, you’d come in without my permission, anyway.”

Steve frowns. “No, I wouldn’t,” he says, sidling around the door. “Not unless you were...”

Tony leans against a workshop bench. He relaxes his whole body weight against his hip, one arm propping him up.

Steve notices very dimly that he’d drawn Tony in a pose like that, once.

“Unless I was…?” Tony asks as Steve walks closer to him. His teeth, once again, seem very sharp. 

“Unless you needed it.” Steve amends and Tony seems to like that. 

(God _damn_ it, Rogers. He chastises himself for it. It wasn’t about making sure Tony was... _appeased._ It was about making sure he was _safe_.)

His mouth relaxes, just a little, and the blues of his eyes no longer seem so bright.

“Hm,” he mutters, turning around. He braces his whole body on both arms, then, before hitching himself up to sit on the workbench. “So, Rogers,” he says, brightly. “I’m assuming you have questions?”

“Ah,” Steve breathes, leans back onto the bench opposite. He tries to feel relaxed but- This place, _Tony’s_ space, it was- it was never this quiet. Ever. “Okay, well, to start, I guess, uh- what’s… what’s different?”

The tone changes like the crack of a wishbone, and Tony claps his hands like a child, delighted. “Yeah! That’s what I’m talkin’ about. Vague questions that let me talk, I _live_ for that- Okay, okay,” 

And in a brief instant, Steve can ignore the blue eyes and the whirring noise and the lack of breathing, because that- that was Tony, alright. Tony, rubbing his hands together at the prospect of getting to _talk_? That sure was Tony.

_“So_ , so, basically, the answer to your question is that _everything_ is different. All of it, and, and guess what! It’s actually _better_ now, rather than worse, which is a significant change from every _other_ impromptu surgery I’ve had to commit to-”

“ _Surgery?_ ” Steve’s insides churn. “Tony-”

“What, you think my eyes connect to the internet naturally? Nah, baby, that shit is an _install._ If life gives you brown, offline eyes, you get a DLC to fix ‘em, know what I mean?”

Steve’s mouth presses into a thin white line while he thinks about that.

Tony had-

Steve coughs. “Your eyes… connect to the internet?”

Tony falters, stares at him, pauses. “Hm. Forgot I didn’t tell you.” He frowns. “That’s weird.” He shakes his head, quickly, and returns to full speed. “Yeah, so basically I’m like. A technomancer or whatever, and- check this out!”

Steve’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He ignores it because there were _far_ more important things to deal with right now, far more stressful things than what was presumably Sam telling him he’d be late for their run tomorrow and-

Tony rolls his eyes. “Look at your phone, Rogers.”

Steve squints at him, then gingerly pulls out his phone. And-

On the screen is a photo, sent from Tony. He squints at Tony again, who already has a laugh on his face.

It’s a photo of Steve. From- from seconds ago. From Tony’s perspective.

His thoughts buzz, for just a second, like his brain couldn’t contain the- the _magnitude_ of this.

He pauses and pointedly shuts his brain up.

Steve looks up at Tony, and then his phone buzzes again. 

It’s the same photo, but this time he has a curly black moustache and a top hat drawn on him.

He blinks at it, then looks up, catching eyes with a thoroughly unimpressed Tony. 

“What,” Tony says. “Not funny? I can do you one with a big dick if you’d like, and glasses- and- oh wait, we could make you an _e-boy,_ ”

Steve clears his throat. “Not really- not really the _time,_ Tony.”

He raises his eyebrows in response, waving a hand flippantly. “Alright, fine, _boring_ . Hey, though. You wanna see what _else_ I can do?” He glances around the room, making murmuring noises as he goes. 

Steve feels utterly, utterly powerless. He watches as Tony-

He watches as Tony grabs a blowtorch, and _immediately_ Steve can feel in his gut that oh, god, whatever Tony’s done, this wouldn’t end well, couldn’t end well, no chance, no chance at all, no exit prospects, no good wishes, no second chances, and he sprints over the few feet towards Tony and-

Tony raises one eyebrow, strangely distant. “What? I’m just tryna _show_ you-” He lifts the blowtorch up to his left hand and he says- “You ready?”

“No!” Steve shouts.

“What? It’s not gonna hurt!” He says, manic, as if- 

As if-

Steve gently rests a hand on Tony’s arm. “ _Tony._ ” He pushes the blowtorch away from Tony’s hand. Tony stares down at where their skin connects, then up at Steve. It’s like he’s-

Buffering, Steve’s hindbrain provides, in a very very small voice.

And what gets him is that Tony doesn’t appear to understand. Steve glares and Tony looks back quizzically, concerned for Steve’s welfare and not his own, and _god fucking damnit_ , he doesn’t know how to explain this-

“Tony.” Steve says. 

“ _What?”_ Tony spits, like he really doesn’t get it, and oh god, how the _fuck_ was he going to explain this to _Pepper-_

_“Tones, please._ ” He pleads, desperate. It’s the bookend, the doorstop, the red button. Something _clicks,_ back into place from where it had fallen out of its joint, a subluxated rib returned to position. A bomb dropped, and nature returned years later.

Tony drops the blowtorch and stares down at his hands.

The blue flashes in his eyes and he blinks.

“Jesus christ, Steve, I-” Tony looks up, looks down, and the blue crackles and refracts.

Steve wraps him into a hug, immediately, fingers spread across his back as Tony clutches back.

“Steve,” he mumbles, breathing now, breathing _heavy_ now, “I thought-”

He heaves another breath.

“I thought it would help.”

***

From there it is downhill. Sometimes Steve thinks it is uphill, even an overtly uphill deterioration because Tony is doing absolutely nothing to prevent his own- 

Steve wants to say death, but he can’t do that. Can’t even think it.

Though, a little part of him wonders if Tony can even _die,_ now.

***

Week One

Tony hugs closer to him on the couch. He’s flicking through the channels with his eyes, unable to choose between a shitty cooking program and what looks like a kids show where robots fight each other.

Tony was cold a lot now. He’s got socks on, Steve thinks idly, and the room was warm. Tony shuffles closer anyway. Not that he wouldn’t have done that before, Steve corrects himself. There was always a closeness with Tony now, one that had slowly glozed its way into their relationship. He’d been distant at first, but-

They worked together. They _worked,_ really, where Tony was all bark and no bite and Steve was mostly bite and very little bark, these days. He pauses on that for a second. Tony was pretty much directly responsible for his, uh. Calming down. He’d been an angry kid, an angrier adult, and-

He wasn’t _not_ angry anymore, he supposes. He just wasn’t angry at Tony. Not, uh. Not consistently angry at Tony, anyway.

That was partly why Steve was worried, really. Because with this whole Extremis thing, he kind of was angry at Tony.

Tony who was very abruptly going through some kind of episode.

Steve looks down at him, where his feet are pressed into Steve’s thigh, where his elbows- covered in a long sleeve tee, even though it was spring, now- support his head.

He gazes blankly at the screen before blinking back into himself. He makes a soft noise.

God, say what you fuckin’ wanted about whatever Tony has done to his brain, but- 

But-

It had made him _docile._

Steve huffs out a breath in disgust at the thought. Tony looks up at him, _fuck_ , so he shoots his gaze towards the screen and laughs.

“You settled on- what is this?”

“Oh,” says Tony. “It’s this- It’s a show where robots fight each other.”

“Huh,” Steve says. “And- hang on, is that Craig Charles?”

Tony’s eyes widen, and he laughs- it catches in his throat, and something sounds like it tears, just a little, like the seam of a pair of shitty jeans-

“Tony!?” He exclaims, shifting to attention.

Tony coughs up that clear liquid again. His eyes shift. They go blank, and then there’s- there’s a faint whirring, one that Steve can only hear over the voices on the TV because he already knows to listen for it, and-

“Tony…” Steve calls when there’s silence. The whirring slows, the faint ringing in his ears smoothes out, and then there’s silence again. “Tony?” Tony once again blinks back into reality.

“Ah,” he mutters, clearing his throat. “Hm, gotta up those speeds, I think, the buffering on this thing is getting ridiculous.” 

(It does not occur to him until that night. ‘This thing’, the thing Tony needed to upgrade- that was _him_ . That was _Tony.)_

He jolts when Steve gently, _gently_ places his hand onto his shoulder. “Tony,” Steve murmurs. “Are you okay?”

“Sure,” he says, nonchalant. The front of his shirt is wet with whatever he’d just coughed up. ”Just gotta like, Perform a miracle with the download speed.”

Steve blinks, frowns, grimaces. “Tony, I think we need to get you to a hospital.”

“Oh, _absolutely_ not.”

“No, Tony, I don’t- I don’t think this up for debate,”

Tony scowls at him and swings his legs out from where they’d still been resting on Steve. They land firmly on the floor. “Man, what do you think a hospital can do that I can’t?”

Steve blinks. “What?”

“What, you don’t think I can’t _do_ it?” He stands abruptly.

“Tony-” Steve is suddenly aware that Tony is blisteringly angry. His face is sweaty, his skin visibly pink and the veins showing through his neck. There’s a vein on his _temple,_ even, which is-

“I knew it, Steve, you just- you don’t think I can _do it, always thought I was makin’ bad decisions,_ and now I’m fuckin’, I’m _reapin’_ the benefits, asshole, and that’s- good for me, fuck you,” he pauses for breath and something clicks over in his eyes.

Steve heaves a breath.

“Shit fuck,” Tony mutters. “That- That didn’t make any sense. I-” He pushes his fingers into his temple. “Alright asshole, playing it back doesn’t help, does it? I _know_ what happened, I just don’t know why it-”

He blinks again, staring at Steve. “Huh.” He clears his throat again, and cracks his fingers. “Steve,” he says, carefully. “I think- I think that I have-” he trails off. “Something has gone wrong.”

And Steve knows with a sinking, terrible, anchor-weighted feeling, that he’s right.

***

Very, very late at night, when they’re sitting too close to each other on the couch, Tony looks up at him.

“Hey, you- how did you know who Craig Charles is?”

Steve blinks at him. The room is so dark, and it is very difficult to ignore the glare from Tony’s eyes and heart. “What?”

“From Robot Wars,” Tony says. “Craig Charles narrates it, you recognised him.”

“Oh,” Steve says, pushing his hair out of his face. It was the end of the day, and the stuff he’d put in at 7am to try and stick it in place was giving way. “Uh,” he mumbles. “He plays- he’s a musician. I like him.”

“Good,” Tony says, as he yawns, “It’s good that your music taste is terrible,” and then he flops back, teeth faintly blue as he grins in the dark, dark room. “Makes mine seem good in comparison. Not, of course, that my music taste is bad. People talk though, you know? People are sayin’ like, ‘oh you know Tony, he listens to AC/DC and _nothing_ else’, and I’m telling you, that’s unfair, because I _love_ Britney Spears and she is definitely not Malcolm and Angus Young of AC/DC fame-”

And it’s so much like… It’s so much like before that his heart aches.

What it aches for, he’s not sure. He and Tony had never… they’d never had anything. But it’s so like whatever he’d not had, and his heart aches anyway.

***

Week Three

“So, JARVIS, how do we fix this?” Tony says, clapping his hands together.

They’re in the basement, the lab, and Steve places the cup of (decaf) coffee on the side next to Tony as gingerly as he can and sits down. 

JARVIS sighs. “Sir, with all due respect, I am in no better a position to answer that than you are.”

“Aw, J, don’t underestimate yourself.” Tony is tapping at a screen. 

“Hardly, sir,” The exasperated voice has an edge to it.

“Am I really ‘sir’, anymore though J? Not really human anymore, am I?”

Steve looks up from his coffee. “Tony,” he warns, and _immediately_ guilt punches him in the gut.

Tony was unwell, but he wasn’t- he wasn’t a child.

“What?” Tony asks, turning around. He doesn’t look angry, which is a start, features playful and genuine and confused all at once. “I’m a machine now, aren’t I?”

“No, Tony,” Steve murmurs and means it. “You’re a man. You have feelings.”

Souring, Tony stretches his neck out. “Huh. But J has feelings, don’t you J? And I’d say I programmed them myself, but that’d be a lie, because they’re entirely self-generated, right J?”

JARVIS is audibly hesitant. “Sir,” he says. Soft. 

What the fuck is he meant to make of _that?_ Not only was Tony going- 

(He winces over the phrase ‘going mad’, and corrects himself)

-through an episode, but he’d built- he’d built an AI that was _alive_ ? That was _human_?

“Sir,” JARVIS seems to pause for thought before speaking, voice slightly tinny even through Tony’s speakers. “I am nothing but your creation.”

“Bullshit,” Tony spits, arms crossed. “No way. I thought I raised you better than that, J, you should know you’re better than all of them. Better machine than _I_ am, even, and I _made_ myself one.”

“You’re not a machine, Tony,” Steve whispers. The memory of him is suddenly at the very front of his mind. Cold toes pressed against his thigh, fuckin’ blueberries dropped on the floor so Steve had nearly slipped, the music, the late nights watching cooking shoes, Tony pretending to work- Steve clears his throat. “You’re not a machine.”

Tony shrugs. “Nothing wrong with being a machine, sport.” And that’s when Steve’s consciousness catches onto the clicking.

The clicking from Tony, the way his exhales sounded rhythmic, they were- they were repeating.

“Nothing wrong,” he repeats, looking at Steve strangely. He’s looking at Steve like he’s seeing something not there.

The clicks sound like the intonation of his words. Fuck, what-

(Nothing wrong, nothing wrong, the clicks whisper.)

Steve starts to breathe heavier. 

“Captain Rogers?” JARVIS says, calm and cool as always.

Tony narrows his eyes at the ceiling, then at Steve. He blinks, then, and the light from behind his eyes flashes.

Something clicks.

“Fuck,” he mutters. “Should’ve _noticed,_ stupid idiot brain,”

He drops his arms, drops his tight shoulders, and Steve watches as Tony Stark returns to himself. He bites at his lip. 

“Sorry, Steve.” he murmurs. “You okay?”

And Steve could fucking _cry._ Instead, he squares his jaw. Feels the burning in his chest subside. He watches as Tony fidgets.

The pause is a great yawning gap between them. Steve has never felt less in control than right now.

“Are you?” Steve returns, eventually.

And Tony says, “I have no idea.” 

Steve hugs him, desperately. It takes a second for him to hug back. 

***

Week Four

The thing is, about the saving the planet thing… It comes from nowhere. 

It comes from _nearly_ nowhere, Steve amends. It started with the machine-thing, goes from there.

There was eco-conscious, and then there was… whatever Tony was doing. 

“Tony was never good at sleeping, though.” Pepper tries. It almost seems like she’s saying it just to see how it tastes on her tongue. It seems to rankle in the air between them, and it sits on her breath like something sour. 

“It’s… it’s not that,” he says. He rubs the back of his head, leaning forward and spreading his legs, resting his elbows on his knees. “It’s- have you seen the kind of stuff he’s doing?”

Pepper purses her lips. “No,” she says, shortly. “Should I?”

“...no,” he clarifies. “Probably not. But, still, I’ve seen it. I- I asked JARVIS about it.”

She leans back in her chair, drums her fingers on the table. The sound makes him nervous. “And?” She asks. 

“Uh, well. JARVIS thinks that Tony…”

She narrows her eyes when Steve trails off. “JARVIS?” She calls. 

“Yes, Ms Potts?”

God forbid, the robot sounds stressed. Steve doesn’t know what to do with that information, so he files it away. Something to think about later. 

“What’s wrong with Tony, J?”

JARVIS sighs. “Sadly, I’m going to need an easier question if you want an easy answer.”

Pepper runs her tongue over her front teeth and drums her fingers again. “Give me three things I should be worried about, other than the fact that he’s got the internet in his brain.” 

Steve blinks at her, but- no good in doing anything but wait for JARVIS’s response, really. JARVIS sighs. 

“In order of severity, Ms Po-?”

She scowls and visibly grinds her teeth together. “JARVIS, you have known me long enough to know that I’d prefer any order, so long as you tell me what I need to worry about in the next ten seconds flat,” she snaps. 

“Understood. Mr Stark is currently experiencing massive, uncontrolled and unpredictable mood swings.”

Pepper exhales. “We’ve been there before.”

“He is also experiencing attacks of paranoia and concentration fluctuations.” Jarvis says, smoothly. “And I am beginning to suspect Extremis is causing psychosis.”

Pepper blinks. “Psychosis?”

Steve stares at the floor. “He’s been- hallucinating, we think,” he mutters. The floor of the office is grey, tiled. It’s clinical. Clean. “He’s- delusional, sometimes. We think.”

“I know what psychosis is, yes.” Pepper snaps, and Steve looks up with a frown. She’s digging her fingers into her temples. “Look, Rogers, I like you, and I- I’ve been here before, with Tony. Well,” she gestures. “Not _here_ , not- not delusional and hallucinating here, but the point stands that I absolutely cannot do anything to help.” She looks at him seriously. 

He opens his mouth to speak, and then closes it, wordlessly. 

“He’s not going to change for you, Steve. He wouldn’t change for me.”

Steve bites at his lips and bounces his knee. “What will he change for, then?”

Pepper sucks in a breath through her teeth. “I wish I knew.”

Silence falls for a brief moment. 

“What did you mean,” Pepper asks, suddenly. The silence falls apart like sand under a heavy footstep. “What did you mean when he said he wasn’t sleeping?”

“He’s… working. Or writing, anyway.”

“Until what time?”

“I-“ he starts. Sudden wariness shoots through him, though he’s got absolutely no idea why. “8, 9 in the morning, I think? He seems to sleep until 11.”

“...every day?”

Steve shakes his head. “No. Sometimes he won’t sleep at all, sometimes he’ll get sixteen hours.” The discomfort clings to him. 

Pepper nods, clicking her tongue. “Yes. The all or nothing thing is just Tony. The, um. The weird schedule and the writing, that’s new. And,” she says, running her tongue over her front teeth again. “What- What does he write? Is it disorganised speech?”

“...Why are you talking like a psychologist?” It springs from the bottom of his mind, completely unbidden. He closes his mouth, slowly. 

Pepper looks at him oddly. “Because he needs one, Steve.”

Which he supposes is true. He sighs and crosses his arms, looking down at the grey tiles again. 

“He thinks he’s a machine. And- it’s- climate change. He- he thinks he can single handedly stop climate change.”

Pepper spits out a sad laugh. “You know, Steve,” she murmurs, staring at him. Her eye contact is searing. “A few weeks ago, if you’d asked me, I’d say that if there is anyone on this planet that could, I’d firmly believe it was Tony.” She purses her lips and sighs. “As it stands… I’ll talk to R&D. They’ll have to keep going without Tony’s ideas for now.”

She stands up and adjusts her suit, staring out the window. “Anyway, Steve, I have a 5 o'clock-“

He stands too, incredulity springing onto him. “What, that’s it?”

She whirls around on him. “What else do you expect me to _do_ , Rogers?!” She scowls. ”I can’t fix that man’s brain, believe me, I’ve _tried_ , and I don’t need to take lessons from _anyone.”_

Steve opens and closes his mouth. “But there must be _something_ we can do-“

“Bull _shit_ , Rogers, there is absolutely nothing we can do. He won’t get better unless he wants to.”

“Pepper-“

“Enough. Out, please. I don’t have time for this.”

So he leaves. And that’s that. 

***

Week Six

“I’m a god,” Tony says, conversationally. 

Steve peers at him. His gut flips. “Are you?” He replies, equally conversationally. Maybe his voice cracks, maybe it doesn’t. Either way, Tony doesn’t seem to notice.

Tony shrugs. “Probably.” He pauses, taps his hands against his knee. “Though, you know it’s weird. I never...” Glancing at Steve, he pulls a face. “Ah,” he sighs. “Seems silly now. I never thought I had the- you know. The substance.”

Steve blinks. 

“And here I am, you know! Before, I was saving people. The suit, man, saved my life, but- the, the, saving the _world?_ Literally? That’s it. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I was created. No man should- no human should feel like this. Wouldn’t be able to contain it. Wouldn’t be able to keep it in their head, would they? And there’s no _way_ I would’ve been able to use Extremis if I was _that_ worthless, you know?”

Steve blinks again. “Oh, Tony,” he murmurs, and he doesn’t realise he’s said it out loud until he catches Tony’s stare. He clears his throat, and tries not to imagine Tony choking up that liquid. “What, uh… What does it feel like?”

His eyes waver, just a bit. The light of the twitches, shifts, and the shapes within them make an odd jumping movement. 

Buffering, he thinks. This time it doesn’t seem like such a bad word. 

Tony grasps at his hand. 

“It feels like god, Steve.” He says, when his eyes click back into focus and it looks like he sees the world clearly again. “It feels like every single atom of your being was there for a purpose, like your- your core was designed. All of it, designed, and when I see things- the pop-ups, it’s just my brain trying to cope with all the new information and- presumably it’s dopamine, I guess, my hormones freaking out trying to adjust.”

“You… see things?” Which Steve had known, he’d guessed, but- 

Tony ignores him, their hands still pressed together. “And I assume that there’s like, parts of my synapses, my neurons, whatever, that can’t deal with it and that’s why I feel like this all the time and that’s just something I have to deal with, my problem, you know, like a cross or my beast of burden or whatever. And this thing, with the new reactor stuff,” he heaves a breath.

“Tony…”

“The reactor stuff, and code Greenland, and all of this bunker work I’ve been doing for people, and the fact that nobody can do it but me, it’s mine and there’s nobody else who can do it so I’m going to…”

Steve blinks, but Tony carries on. “I’ve been working on it and I think I’m gonna fulfill-”

He blinks again. “I’m gonna fulfill-“ he repeats. “I’m gonna-”

Click-crack. Sharp as a whip, Tony’s eyes seem to twitch. It’s like a camera adjusting into focus.

He squeezes Steve’s hand, very, very tightly. “Steve.” He says, carefully. Shakily. “How long has it been since- since I…? Since Extremis?”

Steve thinks, oh. 

Oh no. 

Steve clears his throat. “In weeks?”

Tony drops his hand. “Weeks?!” He says, staring into dead space. “Weeks. Right. How many weeks?”

Steve- what the fuck do you _say_ to that? What do you-

Steve tells the truth. “Six weeks. And a day, I think. We’re- we’re not sure what time or where you did it.”

Tony looks at him, eyes buffering again. “We?” He repeats after Steve. 

“Me, Jarvis. Pepper, she knows some of it.” He feels lost. Lost, adrift, deep into the earth's core. Like someone’s cast him into magma. 

“And, and…” he mutters. Tony starts to vibrate in place. “Ah,” he breathes, and then breathes, and then breathes again, staccato breaths punctuating the silence. Steve is-

Sitting there. Powerless. 

“Tony?” He asks, softly. 

“Hnnn,” Tony tries, but his mouth is clearly- offline, or something, and his eyes are wild and crazed and something in them tells Steve that something is going to go terribly wrong and-

“Fuck _shit_ you stupid _bastard you let them get to you you let them-”_

“I’ll kill you,” Tony howls, looking at nothing and body juddering and out of itself. The light fittings seem to shift, the lights themselves flicker, the screens around the room crackle with static, white noise, nothing seems to fit- “ _Fuck, Stark,”_ he screams. “You don’t deserve to-“ and he watches as Tony’s mouth spills the clear liquid that he’s starting to suspect is plasma and he watches as Tony screams at himself. He watches as Tony turns toward the room. 

Steve thinks, immediately, damage control. 

(Fuck, he was gonna need therapy for this.)

He watches as Tony grabs for the blowtorch, and snatches it from him. “ _No_ ,” Tony howls. “You don’t _understand,”_

_“You’re right,”_ Steve shouts right back. 

And that’s it. That’s the dam breaking. 

“Tony.” Steve says. He feels it thunderous in his chest. “Tony!” He repeats. He grabs him by the arms, and something about the physical contact must shock him, because he stops, then. The speed slows, the movement mellows.

“Tony, I-” Steve starts. He doesn’t know how to finish. “Tony, I think you need help.”

Sudden, sharp clarity. It looks like it hurts. 

“Fuck, Steve,” he says, quickly. “I have to get this thing out of my head.”

“Can that be done?” Steve asks, just as fast. 

“I’ve no idea.”

***

Week Seven

Tony gets therapy. It’s as simple as Steve sitting with him and waiting for the therapist to arrive, and then when they do, waiting for Tony to ask him to get the door. According to Pepper, who nods at him approvingly when he tells her, Tony had never been so-

Pepper says the word compliant, and Steve winces and replaces that word with _scared._

Dr McGuire comes three times that week.

It seems to be helping, Steve thinks, and lets out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.

There wasn’t a therapist alive who could deal with Tony plugging the internet into his head. There wasn’t anyone who could deal with that. But-

“Psychotic break?” They’d asked, over the phone, and Steve had watched Tony cringe, teeth clench together.

“...Maybe,” Tony mutters, darkly.

It seemed like this therapist could deal with… that bit, at least. Leave Tony to figure out the science of extracting the machine from his brain, maybe, when he was a little-

If he got-

Steve sucks in a breath through his teeth and makes a resolution that he needed to talk to someone about this too. 

_When_ , he repeats. _When_ Tony got better. He clenches his jaw and unclenches it, biting a little at the sides of his tongue. There was no _if._

***

On the Sunday of that week, Steve goes to therapy. It’s expensive, but it was-

They ask him if he was a carer, if he cared for someone with-

They say schizophrenia, and Steve shakes his head. “Psychosis,” he returns. “He wasn’t- he wasn’t always like this,” even though he knows that’s not _necessarily_ the difference, but that seems to placate the therapist, so he folds his hands into his lap and makes a soft noise.

And they talk, and it helps.

It feels, very faintly, like the tide is turning. Tony has fewer- he stares into space less, almost immediately. He seems less distracted. Third session in, Tony looks at him and shrugs when he asks how it was going.

“Well enough,” he mumbles, sighing. “I think it’s helping but… when it’s quieter, it still feels…”

Steve rattles the fact that he wasn’t Tony’s therapist around his head, deliberately. His skull feels abruptly very empty. Steve doesn’t respond, but Tony doesn’t seem to mind. His fingers flex, and his head flops back onto the sofa.

His ashen face looks a little brighter, today. “I think it’s helping,” he repeats.

They still spend a lot of time together. Steve goes out more (there was only so much he could _do)_ , but they still spend a lot of time together.

Tony still had outbursts.

But it feels like the tide is turning nonetheless.

***

Week Eight

Tony isn’t meant to be going out in the Iron Man suit, but it’s very difficult to stop him. Especially with the internet in his head. 

“I need help.” He’d said. 

Steve, stupidly, had asked him from who. And he’d said, with no hesitation, “from the gods.”

What Steve was meant to do with that, he didn’t know. He thinks of tides turning, and then he thinks of the way waves still roll in even when the tide was out.

He calls Natasha. They follow him. 


	2. loading

Tony has a _flash-start-stop_ of lucidity. It cracks him out of his shell, and he feels horrendously, horribly alone. There is nothing but him at this moment, no noise, no pop-ups, there is nothing but the fact that he is real and alive (kind-of) and the universe was alive and breathing with him.

It clings to him, to his skin and to the metal of the suit. It feels like water.

The clang-crash of the suits footsteps is good, memorable, easy in a way he’d had so little of lately. He feels-

Tired. Very tired, dead. He feels like someone has stripped him of something vital, something he needed and now very much didn’t have.

There’s a yawning void in his gut, but he’ll take that over-

He cringes. A pop-up shoots across his eyes, and once again, there’s this fuckin’- how did Extremis get a _virus?_ His brain was essentially a system of code now, and nothing had changed, and-

Nothing had visibly changed, Tony amends. Something something subroutine, something something hidden in the deep deep core of his machine insides, where he’d apparently totally overwritten the code that gave him a half-way functioning _brain-_

He’s shocked out of his tumbling train of thought when a man walks up to him.

“Hello,” the man says and Tony feels the repulsor rise up to meet this-

Big-guy-big-dude-big-guy-big-dude-

His brain sputters and cringes. Wrecked, car wreck, accident, _auto-collision on the freeway, five dead,_ Extremis screams at him. Tony crashes a hand to his forehead and spits out a curse at how absolutely ridiculous his brain was now, free-association swatting down any coherent thoughts he might want, _thanks_ brain, _thanks Extremis-_

“...Are you alright?” the guy asks.

Alright-alright-alright-alright- Tony’s brain launches into that one fucking song, and he shakes his head violently.

“Who are _you?”_ Tony snarls. The big guy grins, and if Tony was in his right mind he’d notice his smile slightly crooked at the edges in concern.

“I am _Thor_.” 

Ah, Tony notes. Hallucination. He puts another little check mark into the box marked, ‘fuck, Tony, you’re having a psychotic episode,’ and shoots at the guy with his repulsors. Usually that made them go away. 

Tony squints as the guy flies away from the shot. 

“Ah, you _are_ Iron Man, then? The gods have not heard from you in some time, and we-“

Mouthy hallucination. Tony shoots another set off. 

“Iron Man, we wish to _help you-“_ This big blonde and brawny hallucination was _not_ what he signed up for when he joined the ranks of the psychotic, and he sneers at it. Not real. Couldn’t hurt him. 

_“Shut the fuck up.”_

The guy frowns. Swings his hammer. “That’s not very nice.” 

The hammer shoots into him, clanging at the metal and forcing him backwards through the trees. He collides with a rock face with a crash that cracks at his ear drums. 

Weirdly, later, it was always that noise that haunted him. The rattle of his bones, his teeth clashing together- it was never the sheer silence-noise of Extremis. It was always that crash. 

Tony snarls. “Who the fuck _are you?”_

_“Oh,”_ he laughs. “I told you. I am Thor. God of _thunder.”_

_And then-_

And then the man jets lightning into his armour, into his brain, into his nerves and into his very fucking soul, it pours through his limbs, through the sinews of his muscles like god knows what, and soon the armour is at 600% capacity and he notices that the guy looks concerned, he catches himself laughing at the way the edges of him twitched, so-

He pours all of his energy into the repulsors and the man just drops to the fuckin’ ground. Score, he grins, and has all of about five seconds to revel in his 10 minutes of lucidity before the world goes black and he falls to his knees. 

In future, he’d remember that as the only time with Extremis where it had been offline. 


	3. tidal

Steve finds him face down on the ground opposite a blonde man. 

“Thor,” Natasha says, conversationally. 

“Fuck,” he whispers. 

He hauls them both back onto the quinjet, and they- they wait. 

Steve waits for them both, anyway, and Natasha waits for Thor to wake up because there was something about Fury wanting him, but-

Steve waits for Tony. 

***

“...sorry,” Tony mutters. He scratches at the back of his head, then itches at his beard. “I know I don’t sound sorry.” He looks up at Thor. “Sorry,” he repeats, flat, dead-sounding.

Tony looks haggard, Steve notes. He looks like he’s dying. It thrums in his gut, and he gently shoves the feeling to the side as he gingerly places himself down in the seat opposite them both. 

Thor looks... concerned, Steve thinks that’s the right word. Wary. “I trust that you are.” He responds. “But are you…” Thor glances at Steve. “Are you alright?”

And Tony, in a very small voice, says, “Extremis went offline.”

Steve’s jaw clenches. “What?” He asks. 

Tony looks at him directly. “Extremis went offline and I’ve completely lost control of my life.”

***

Week Eleven

“I think…” Tony mumbles. They’re on the couch again. This time it’s a cooking show murmuring in the background.

Steve glances at him, looking up from his book. Tony’s feet are pushed against Steve’s thigh, and Steve has a hand resting on his calf.

In another world, they’d be- They could be-

Steve thinks about Tony’s fear, and about the way he moved, and the way his sharp-sharp brain was more than just a sharp-sharp brain, and how he was still Tony even though he was ill, even though he wasn’t quite seeing things the same way as Steve. He thinks about how Tony was really fucking trying. How he didn’t want to lose contact with reality, even though he very easily could, and how reality was clearly less good than whatever it was he was experiencing. Steve thinks that even though he was-

Steve thinks that even though Tony wasn’t well, he was still- There was so much to-

Steve is getting very good at learning not to say certain words. He’s learned not to say ‘mad’, or ‘compliant’, or ‘stupid’. He just… Seems like he’s also learned to not say ‘love’.

Steve immediately stomps down on any feelings he’s ever had before they happen, then releases his breath. Come on, he thinks, put it in a box. So long as you open it later.

When Tony’s well.

Tony’s looking at him, oddly, when he finally clips back out of his train of thought. “What’re you thinking about?”

Steve bites his lip. “...you,” he says, slowly. It feels sacreligious, like he shouldn’t say it, like he shouldn’t even think it, but they’re-

Fuck, Tony’s ill, but sometimes with Tony’s feet pressed into his thighs and his voice, deep and soft, he can almost- 

It almost feels like they’re making progress. And not even mental health progress, either, that was the problem.

Steve feels like he’s bartering with himself.

“Me,” Tony says, sighing. “I… Steve, I think I need to apologise.”

Steve blinks. That- was not expected. There is a twinge of guilt, and a twinge of terror, and a further twinge that says, holy fuck Steve, you are an asshole for falling in love with Tony Stark- He stamps down on that feeling, too.

“Steve- wow,” he says. “You are so totally not listening to me right now. And here I am about to spill my soul and apologise-”

“No, no,” Steve blurts. “I’m listening! I’m listening.”

Tony grins. “I know you are, Steve. I know you are.”

And they make eye contact. It feels like a friction burn, red-raw, because- god fucking damn it, Steve misses Tony’s old eyes, and fucking hell, Steve wants to-

Kiss him.

There’s something about the curve of his neck, the metal of his resolve, the skin lit blue by his eyes, by his heart, and Steve thinks, oh fuck-

But then Tony’s talking again. “Annnnyway, let’s just firmly stomp down on that moment for a second while I tell you that I’m....S-” he pauses, gesturing to his face. The ‘s’ noise seems to slip over his tongue and he winces. “Sorry for- this.” His fingers rest on his face, on his eyes. “I’m sorry I was- yeah. Sorry I thought it was a good idea.”

“Oh, Tones,” Steve mumbles. Flashes of a Tony that was- new. Not old-Tony, not…. Not-ill Tony, but… A new one. A new man. “I...”

“...you don’t need to say anything, Steve, you know that right?” He says, after a short silence. His fingers rest on his chin, and his eyelashes seem longer than they ever have, lit up by soft blue-white light.

“Yeah, Tony, but-”

Tony grins. “No buts. This is the most coherent I’ve felt in weeks-” he stops, looks faintly stricken, then visibly relaxes himself. “One sec,” he mutters. Muscle by muscle, sinew by sinew, Steve watches as his toes tense, then his calves, then his thighs, all the way up his body until he sees Tony pushing his tongue against the front of his mouth, and- 

He exhales. When he looks at Steve, the light of his eyes is soft. “See?” he says, a tiny smile on his face. “Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?”

Giddy, Steve suddenly- he laughs. “You’re not old, Tony,” it's not what he expects himself to say, but it happens anyway. 

Tony gives him the side-eyes, and Steve exhales a laugh through his nose. “What? Baby, please, don’t tell me I’ve got all of these creaking bones and this heart condition for nothing! I’m older than you are, you… you young thing, you,”

Steve laughs properly this time, a surprised bark of a laugh that throws him off a little. “I’m older than you are. You can check my birth certificate,”

“Oh, whatever,” Tony flicks his wrist, flippantly. “Hardly. I’ve been awake all of my years, you were having a really, really long nap-”

Steve raises an eyebrow, sucking in a laughing breath through his teeth. “I dunno, Tony, I think the records speak for themselves-”

“‘The records?’ he repeats, laughing himself. He sits up straighter. “What are you, a cop?”

Steve laughs, again. It settles into his bones. Warm.

Soft.

***

Steve stops counting weeks, because slowly, little by little, it seems to ease out into nothing. Or, like- like less, anyway. 

Like much less.

***

Tony bites into an apple, waltzing out of his therapy appointment like he’s got everything under control. And maybe he does.

“Y’alright?” He asks, through a mouthful of fruit. 

Steve grins back, brightly. “Sure.”

***

Recovery is non-linear. Steve thinks of tidal waves, and the turning of tides, and he thinks of sea-life stranded on the shore.

Tony spits out nonsense words, sometimes, not because Extremis tells him to, but because it is so loud. Tony says that, once. Directly afterward.

“Steve,” he says. It’s pleading, a desperate understatement of whatever it was that Tony was feeling right now. “It is so much. When it happens it’s like- like a car wreck. Freeways, you know, they just grind to a standstill and then- then the traffic just has to go one at a time and you can’t, you, you can’t stop it, it's whichever car is next that goes.”

He looks at Steve, and curls up. He rests his head on Steve’s chest. “I thought I was getting better.” 

Steve blinks, then. “You are, Tony, you are getting better.”

He looks at him with big blue eyes. They glow less acrid, these days. 

“Am I?” he asks. It isn’t a genuine question, so Steve makes a face and sighs.

***

“JARVIS,” he calls, dark suit spread thin across him. He hadn’t been to the gym in a while, that much was clear, and where his suits used to be tight around the bicep now they’re almost loose.

Steve frowns at the thought. Maybe they could do that together? Going to the gym had been one of Steve’s respites, for a long time, but… Tony was improving. And-

There’s a small part of him that smashes down on a thought. It says, Tony with those old tank tops on instead of the long sleeve ones he always wore now, Tony with his biceps back, Tony with sweat rolling down his sides and a grin on his face-

Shut up, Rogers. Shut up.

“Yes, sir,” JARVIS returns. The walls light up in blue.

Tony grins. “It’s been a while since I…” he frowns, then, at whatever he’d been about to say. He shakes his head and continues. “It’s been a while,” he says, instead.

“Has it, sir?”

Tony smiles, more widely, more genuinely, this time. “Sure, it has.” He spreads his fingers and cracks them, body tensing then relaxing.

Steve watches from above his book. 

And he relaxes into- something. Something power strung and sitting in his sinews, Tony looks at home.

He doesn’t need JARVIS’ input anymore. He flexes his muscles, and the shine of his eyes grows bright.

“Hey, how about we…?” Tony steps past sharp lines of light projected onto the wall, fingers dusting over the cords of them, light as a feather. “How about we hack something? Not done that in a while.”

Steve frowns. 

“We, of course, meaning me, and something of course meaning you-make-something-cool-for-me-to-hack, J, and then I have fun with it-” and words smooth from him, now, instead of jarring from him.

And with Extremis, it’s-

“Give me a few seconds, sir,” JARVIS says. Something about his tone is- it’s brighter, warmer. More alive.

There’s warmth to the room, blue though it is. It clings to the surfaces. A faint whirring fills the silence and its comfortable.

He’s used to it, and Tony doesn’t seem uneasy, so he sips at his coffee, opens his book to his his bookmark, and starts to read. 

There’s a trembling moment in the air, but Steve isn’t worried, not at all. He doesn’t look up from his book, even. There’s tenderness in the room. The way JARVIS and Tony interacted, now, it’d lost it’s edge. For a while, they’d almost been in competition, Tony spitting code and nonsense at the screens.

Now, they work together. In tandem, simple. Beautiful, Steve thinks, like a well-oiled machine, and the metaphor has lost its edge too. He feels it roll around his brain, Tony wasn’t a machine, not really. But he wasn’t- He wasn’t human, not totally. And it wasn’t fair to chop off that part of him, the part with the glowing heart and the glowing eyes.

“Oh, and Steve?” Tony grins over his shoulder and Steve startles just a little, and catches Tony smiling brighter than the sun. “You’re gonna wanna watch this.”

The room explodes into light, green, blue, and complicated. The lightshow absorbs the room, stretching from the wall out into the space, and Steve watches as Tony inhales through his nose and out through his mouth, eyes twitching, just a little. 

The space is beautiful. It spreads and touches the ceiling, projected from nowhere but everywhere at once.

Like a spider's web. Steve thinks, momentarily, that Tony was the one weaving it, but then JARVIS intones something he doesn’t quite catch. Tony does, though, because he glances at Steve.

“See,” he smiles. “Told you JARVIS could think.”

***

Tony has another episode, one that is clearly not as easy to stamp down on.

Steve shoots to his feet. 

“Fuck you,” Tony screeches at himself, pulling at the fabric of his shirt and scrabbling his fingers against the arc reactor. Pause the moment, and it could’ve been weeks ago. Could’ve been the first time, like he wasn’t recovering at all. Steve bites his tongue at the thought.

“Tony,” he says. He’s learnt how to deal with these things now, learned how to stop Tony from descending into overload. Usually, it was as simple as a gentle hand on his arm, a steady presence, a reminder for Tony that he can cope with it now.

It wasn’t like that today.

Tony rears and retches, the thin clear liquid exploding out of him, and he contorts his fingers. They look, in the dim blue flush of Tony’s eyes as he stares at them, like- like plasticine, like clay, like a child’s plaything gone wrong. He grabs at his shirt again, an old Iron Maiden thing that had holes and burn marks in it, and Tony’s muscles flex and unflex, strange and uncomfortable, and Steve watches as his fingers contort and tense and shake.

Tony was all simple lines and clear-cut suits until he wasn’t. 

Steve cringes, shakes himself out. “Tony,” he repeats. Never got any easier. It was never easier to watch.

Tony ignores him, jabbering out nonsense phrases and looking like- like he had something so important to say, crashed and stamped on by the confines of language.

“Cut it down, Stark. Grit your teeth.” He spits, guttural, wet-sounding in his throat. “It was never about love, never, never-ever, never.”

“Tony…” Steve takes a step towards him, but he’s slowing, now.

He’s-

“Never loved you, never, never-ever, never-”

With a start, Steve realises Tony is crying. “I can’t,” he mutters, heaving warped breaths. “Come on, there’s- I can’t,” he stutters, “I can’t…”

And then, slowly, without Steve moving from the spot with his feet planted firmly on the floor, Tony begins to come back to himself. 

He squares his shoulders, stares at the ground. He plants his feet, and Steve watches his toes curl up, pushing. His calves, next, tense and relax, then his thighs and then-

Tony makes a grumbling noise. “Wish I could do that with my brain,” he says, sour. And then he looks up. His eyes are pink and his nose is dripping with tears. He clears his throat, gently. “Mm,” he says. “Sorry about that. You okay, Steve?”

Steve blinks at him, then heaves a breath. His therapist had been talking about communication skills recently. Lies by omission, as it turned out, were still lies. “Uh,” he says, planting a hand on the back of his head and pulling a face. “I’m… a bit shaken. As always,” he admits. “But that was a bad one...?” 

Tony laughs wetly, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “You could say that. You know, I’m fairly in control of it now. Until I’m not, you know? I could probably, like. Trigger missiles with my mind, but it still- it doesn’t give a shit about that. Not really, it only cares about, uh,” he coughs. “About other things.”

Steve pauses, and thinks about what just happened. He thinks about raw vulnerability involuntarily pasted over Tony’s brain, how lies by omission were still lies, how Tony couldn’t hide even if he wanted to but that maybe giving him back some control was important, and about how Tony was-

Well. He thinks about how Tony was Tony.

Steve is still standing. Tony, shaking like a goddamn leaf, plants his feet against the ground and visibly tries not to let his muscles shake. “Tony,” Steve says, softly. “What does it care about?”

Tony looks at him, seriously. His eyes are blue, so fucking blue, and Steve is getting used to it, but he’s not sure he wants to be getting used to it. Tony seems to mull over that question for a moment, licking his lower lip and then biting at it. “I think a better question is- why doesn’t it care about war? I think… I…” He sighs. “The longer I spend with it plugged into my head, the more me it becomes, and the longer I spend trying to work around it, the more it becomes me. It’s just who I am now. It’s not, like, some malevolent thing I plugged into my head. It’s just a machine, a series of codes. Of, uh, protocols, you know? Like there’s things it needs to care about and things it doesn’t, and it’s- it’s a learning computer, I think, because it’s learning.” He pauses, laughs at himself a little.

Steve watches in silence. 

“Okay, Captain Obvious, good job- The learning computer is learning, what a surprise!” He shakes his head. “Anyway. I think that it doesn’t care about war because I don’t care about war, and,” he pulls a face, catches himself. “Well, I don’t care about war now, anyway. But the point is, really, it cares about things I care about, which is why all the pop-ups are about death or alcohol or every time my Dad comes up in the news, and-” He looks up at Steve. “And…” He trails off.

He sighs, and Steve sighs too. “Tony,” he mumbles, softly. He doesn’t know what to say.

He feels like he’s been saying Tony’s name a lot, lately.

For a moment, they’re just two people standing in a room. Steve could almost kid himself that they were just Steve-and-Tony, strangers whose paths had crossed, and who lived their lives without the weight of the world on their shoulders. Like two people who’d met in a laundromat, a coffee shop, a bookstore, anywhere.

The moment slips between them, thin. It feels like a gust of wind on his skin. Gentle. Summer breezes, he supposes, were probably rarely so sad, though, so maybe wind was the wrong word. Maybe it feels like something else, like something soft and intangible, maybe it-

Maybe it feels like love.

Suddenly, Steve- with a start, with a jolt, Steve gets it. There was Tony, standing opposite him. There was Tony, muttering nonsense words from a garbled internal monologue about love. There was Tony, telling Steve he was sorry.

And there was Tony, staring at him with massive blue eyes and a hole in his heart, a dent in his head and fingers shaking, and-

“Tony,” Steve says. He composes himself, stretching out the muscles of his neck and pushing his feet into the ground. Like how Tony did. “Tony,” he repeats, “What else does it care about?”

Tony eyes him seriously, gauging the situation. His eyes click back and forth, and he sighs. “You already know what I’m going to say, though.”

Steve- a feeling blossoms, something he can’t put a word on, and he grins, shakily. It twitches at the corners. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “But it can’t hurt to hear it.”

Tony bites at the inside of his mouth. “I’m- I’m gonna tell you how this is going to happen, okay? Or, or, how I’d like it to happen.”

Slowly, Steve nods. “Okay.”

Tony steps back to lean against the workbench, and rubs his face with his hands. He looks- wary. “So, I’m gonna tell you w-what I’m about to tell you,” he swallows. “And then you’re gonna feel able to say whatever you want, and then regardless, we’re- we’re gonna hug it out, okay?”

Steve can’t help but feel his smile tick up at the corners. “Okay.”

Tony stares at him for a few seconds. He looks like- a deer, a wolf, an animal in a trap. He looks like a poached animal, like a tiger, like a man in a sharp suit stripped naked. He visibly composes himself, taut body forcing itself into relaxation. 

“Extremis…” he starts, “It cares about a lot of things, I think. It cares about Pepper. It cares about Rhodey, and it cares about Happy, and-” he laughs under his breath. “It even cares about Nat, Steve, can you imagine?” 

Steve snorts, but holds his tongue. If this was-

If this was how it happened, if this was the moment, then-

“I… am beginning to realise that there are big parts of me that aren’t, uh. You know. The stereotype, the- the narcissist with drinking problems, you know? I- I haven’t had a drink since, since…” He wiggles his fingers. “Since a while. And, you know, the therapy is good. I wish it wasn’t, you know. I wish I could say I didn’t need it. I wish, and- well, it’s obvious I’m learning. Like, things improve and then I’m just- I’m better.” He heaves a breath.

Steve holds his tongue, but feels his eyes wear soft.

“Not well, you understand. Not like, good. Not- But, anyway, I digress. It’s like-” He stares at Steve. “It’s like I’ve finally got a good pair of glasses. Like I’ve not been able to see my whole life, and I never learned how to compensate.”

He continues to stare at Steve. “I guess, I’m just- I’m getting better, and one thing that, uh. It comes up in therapy a lot. There’s people around me that don’t need to be there, and usually I’d say… Usually they’re trying to get something you know? And I don’t think I’m worth, or, or, entitled to- whatever, look. The point is I’m learning, and that there’s people around me that I’m learning just- for whatever reason, whatever- they just like me.”

“And Steve, you’ve, uh.” He laughs, “You’ve gotta understand this is a big change for me. And I’m not like, learning it overnight, but- It’s getting there. And I just think-”

He looks at Steve with big, blue, mechanised eyes, and he mumbles. “I just think my life would be a lot worse if you weren’t around. And I think- I know it’s not easy, and I know it- I know I’ve probably fucked you up a bit, but I think-” He squeezes his eyes shut, presses his lips together. He heaves a huge breath through his nose, and then, almost lost in a gust of air, “I care about you, Steve Rogers.”

That’s it. There it is. Steve smiles at him, lopsided and soft, and-

Tony blinks, then smiles, so shakily Steve would swear it was on one of those old style TV’s with static crackling at the edges. “Wait, no, that wasn’t the- that was just the question, not the implied one. I’m, I’m gonna try that again.”

He looks Steve dead in the eyes, dead straight, dead centre, and he steels his jaw, and he says, “Steve Rogers, I might be wrong and this could be some kind of Florence Nightingale effect shit in reverse, but- but I’m fairly sure I love you.”

Steve’s gut drops. And then it rises. And then it drops again, flip flopping around in the pit of his stomach. He reaches out and-

Tony holds up a hand, grinning. “No, no, we agreed we’d do the hug after. Say your words, Steve. Use your big boy language.”

Steve laughs, unbidden. It spills from him, softly, slanted at the edges. “You’re incorrigible.”

“See!” Tony says, leaning back. There’s an edge to his eyes, though. “I knew you could use your big boy words.”

“Tony, I-” Steve looks down at his hands, and then up at Tony. “I have- I…” Steve pauses. “You know, when I first went to therapy, they asked me if I was a carer?”

Tony’s mouth twitches downwards. “Oh,” he says. “And what did you say?”

“I said yes,” Steve returns, easily. “And they never asked me why I did it. I think it was obvious enough to me that they just didn’t bother.”

Tony nods, Steve heaves a breath. 

“I, uh. You know what, screw it, I’m just gonna say it. Nothin’ worse than sitting on it right?” Steve opens his mouth and then closes it again. His brain goes blank, and his mind quiets down to a dead halt.

…

“Tony,” he says shortly, “Can you explain why this is so hard?” He squeezes his eyes shut. “You already said it and I’m still-”

“Hey, Steve,” Tony says, easily. There’s something of easiness to his voice, suddenly, softness. Kindness. “Steve,” he repeats, when Steve doesn’t respond. “Steve,” he says, more insistently this time. Steve cracks open his eyes, just a little, just a touch. “Steven, I’m about to make this a whole lot easier.” 

Through the slit of light, and with glowing eyes, and with a grin written all over his face, terrified and open and genuine, Tony asks, “Do you love me?” 

Steve steps towards him, body closer, and then closer, and then they hug each other the tightest they ever have, bodies pressed tight and Tony’s face smashed against his shoulder and,

“Yeah,” Steve says, under his breath. He watches as the hair on the back of Tony’s neck stands on end.

“Fuck yeah, you do,” Tony says, and it’s just like-

It’s just like recovery-

And then they’re kissing, and the world dissolves, waves upon waves upon waves, and there’s seawater in his ears but god, he doesn’t mind.

The tides are turning.

**Author's Note:**

> hi im finley and im compromised and you can find me at verulamfic on all good social media platforms and also at verulams for my main blog on tumblr


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